Puccini - Tosca (Aix, 2019)

Giacomo Puccini - Tosca

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2019

Daniele Rustioni, Christophe Honoré, Angel Blue, Catherine Malfitano, Joseph Calleja, Alexey Markov, Simon Shibambu, Leonardo Galeazzi, Jean-Gabriel Saint Martin, Michael Smallwood, Virgile Ancely, Jean-Frédéric Lemoues, Frank Daumas

ARTE Concert - 9 July 2019

You can always rely on the Aix Festival to bring something fresh and original to established opera classics, and it looks like that principle is going to continue under the directorship of Pierre Audi. If anything with Audi, you could expect it to be ever more challenging and idiosyncratic. Christophe Honoré has been here in Aix before, with a stunning and wholly original colonial take on Mozart's Così Fan Tutte in 2016, and this year the French filmmaker takes an even more cinematic departure from the standard opera approach to Puccini's Tosca.

There are a number of surprises throughout the Aix production of Tosca, but perhaps the greatest is the presence of the great American soprano Catherine Malfitano in the opera, a famous Tosca in her day, not least for the on-location 1992 film version alongside Plácido Domingo. She seems to have retired from dramatic performance for a while now, working mainly now as an opera director, so it's delightful that Honoré has found a way to bring her back to the stage, but also manage to do so using her aura and personality meaningfully in service of the opera. I imagine that the movie version must have made as much of an impression on Honoré as it did on me back then.

It's a lovely idea as a homage then to have Malfitano take on the role of La Prima Donna who is passing on her experience to an up-and-coming new singer in the role of Tosca (and I'm sure there's some blurring of the lines between reality and drama in Angel Blue being the soprano here), but there's always the risk that while it might sound like a fun idea, it could only detract from the power of the original work. You do get that impression of distancing at the start of Act I, with an additional camera crew on the stage supposedly making a documentary about a great opera diva, who is not in great form for the guests who have been booked in to see her that day.

As it's an opera company putting on a production of Tosca who are hoping to gain a few pointers from one of the greatest singers in the role of Floria Tosca, there's evidently a danger of the opera within an opera distancing the viewer from the true emotion and purpose of the original work - Malfitano even at one stage calling the conductor to halt proceedings while she coaches Angel Blue - but you do start to see some overlap in the emotions of the company, as Angel Blue or 'Angel Blue', starts to get a little jealous of the attentions and adoration that her Cavaradossi (Joseph Calleja) is displaying over the eyes of the madonna/prima donna, or perhaps it's the opera that is freeing those heightened emotions.

With the documentary camera crew capturing all these little undercurrents and correspondences from multiple angles, which are broadcast live over the big screens at the back of Alban Ho Van's impressive cinematic set designs on the stage of the Théâtre de l’Archevêché, this does come across more like a movie than a 'proper' opera. It's interesting that Ivo Van Hove recently used a similar behind-the-scenes on-stage crew technique for his theatre adaptation of 'All About Eve' and it's clear that there is another film reference here, Honoré setting Malfitano's prima donna like the silent movie star Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's 'Sunset Boulevard', past her prime and in the midst of a personal crisis over her absence from the limelight.

That becomes more evident in Act II, but despite initial misgivings I was already sold on the idea by the end of Act I, since it was clear that there's a recognition here that - to state the obvious - Tosca is an 'operatic' opera, larger than life. Fitting the traditional Napoleonic drama of Act II into this stage version is inevitably going to be a challenge however, but Honoré rises to that challenge brilliantly by looking at Act II as essentially Tosca's dilemma. Here, dressed like Norma Desmond, Malfitano's diva suffers a crisis after having been introduced to these young rising stars, as the after rehearsal party turns into something nightmarish.

The horror of the abuse, torture and murder in Act II of Tosca here becomes blurred in the fevered mind of the diva with the reality of her real life past and present and her opera characters. Brilliantly, Honoré identifies her struggles with the characters of Madama Butterfly, Lucia di Lammermoor and Salome - all notable Malfitano roles. In this context Scarpia here becomes an almost Harvey Weinstein figure (appropriate as the Weinsteins of the opera world are also coming to light now), and Honoré even manages to make the diva something of a dark figure in her seduction (or paying for) the attentions of young men. It's as highly charged and sexualised (and scandalous) as Act II of Tosca ought to be. The 'Vissi d'arte' is also a showstopper, delivered by Angel Blue, but back projections of other famous Toscas over the years show that the struggle goes back a long time.

Where can you take that in Act II, well to be honest you'd go anywhere with the director after that, but Honoré follows through on the premise and still holds a few surprises in reserve. For Act III he puts the orchestra and conductor up on the stage for the concert performance that was being rehearsed in Act I, and this acts as a backdrop for the 'real-life' tragic demise of Malfitano's diva, identifying with Tosca, her illusions shattered. It's a breathtaking conclusion that, by putting the orchestra centre stage, essentially returns the power back over to Puccini's music. Daniele Rustioni, who we've been fortunate to gain as the chief conductor of the Ulster Orchestra in Belfast and have already experienced his passion for Italian composers and opera this summer, shows us that in Act III Puccini's music is everything.

Well, not entirely everything. Considering the difficulties of playing dual-roles in close up to cameras, the performances are also outstanding. Angel Blue is glorious, Joseph Calleja is tragic, Catherine Malfitano incredible just for her presence and acting performance. What is impressive however is that there are no egos involved here, each of them prepared to put in whatever it takes to make this production one of the most moving Toscas I've ever seen. Impressive on any number of levels, it's not about voices, divas and drama, it's not inflated egos and pretentious concepts; Christophe Honoré's production works because it blurs boundaries between life and art, reducing and elevating Puccini's masterpiece to the level of pure emotion, pure opera, pure Tosca. 

Links: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Mozart - Così fan tutte (Aix-en-Provence, 2016)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Così fan tutte

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, 2016

Louis Langrée, Christophe Honoré, Lenneke Ruiten, Kate Lindsey, Sandrine Piau, Joel Prieto, Nahuel di Pierro, Rod Gilfry

ARTE Concert - 8th July 2016

Categorised as an opera buffa and based on a rather frivolous concept, there is unquestionably a darker side to the morals and attitudes expressed Mozart's Così fan tutte and you don't necessarily need to view from an 'enlightened' modern perspective to see it that way. It's true that most recent productions have tended to put the emphasis on the twisted nature of the game play and the sexual politics of Lorenzo da Ponte's libretto, but few go as far as Christophe Honoré in this new production for the 2016 Aix-en-Provence festival.

Surprisingly a very popular work with film directors at Aix (Patrice Chereau and Abbas Kiarostami have both done productions of this opera for the festival in the past), the dark ambiguities of Così fan tutte and its 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses' machinations have also been explored by Michael Haneke for the Teatro Real in Madrid. French filmmaker Christophe Honoré's take on the subject is a distinctive one, where the setting of Ethiopia in 1930 under the control of Mussolini and the actions of the Gugliemo and Ferrando as Fascist soldiers immediately suggests a turn not only towards a dark treatment but a particularly unpleasant one.

Even as the overture is played out, we see Gugliemo and Ferrando sexually harass and abuse the native Ethiopian women. It's a matter of power and conquest and Honoré clearly intends to draw a parallel between the actions and attitudes of racist soldiers with men's attitudes towards women as they are viewed in Così fan tutte. The men's friend Don Alfonso - who might be an official from the administrative or diplomatic corps in the country - tells them not to be fooled by airs of sophistication and pretence of purity in the white women from their own race. He's convinced that at heart, their own girlfriends, the sisters Flordiligi and Dorabella, are no better than the black native women that they casually frequent and assault.

Well, to all appearances they are not regarded or treated much differently, although both men of course would deny it. They certainly don't accept Don Alfonso's proposition that the women would ever let themselves be seduced by inferior black men and are prepared to bet on it. Pretending to be called off to the front with the army, Gugliemo and Ferrando return disguised as black foreigners to put Flordiligi and Dorabella to the test. Their maid Despina, who is in on the game and has a thing for the native men herself, tells the women that they are well off without their lovers, who are probably unfaithful to them with the native women (and how!), so they should take advantage of the two striking dark-skinned gentlemen who have just appeared declaring undying love for them.

As much of a false equivalence as it might seem to compare the conquest and rape of the native population of an African colony with the power that men exercise over women, and do it moreover in the context of a comic opera by Mozart, this is indeed the crux of the director's argument in relation to the work. Does it stand up to scrutiny? Well, it sounds like a tough sell, but it's no harder to swallow than Mozart and Da Ponte's play on male and female relationships, and in practice it proves to be much more convincing than the awkward contrivances of the comic plot. If you've ever felt any uneasiness at the attitudes expressed in Così fan tutte, well, this production only amplifies that feeling. Surprisingly however, not only is Mozart and Da Ponte's work able to sustain this extreme interpretation, but it actually thrives with a bit of added realism.

Christophe Honoré ensures that every element of the production is geared towards making it real and keeping it in touch with the underlying premise of the opera. Alban Ho Van's sets depicting the exterior and interior of an army garrison in an Ethiopian town are strikingly realistic, enhanced by the fine use of lighting. Directed for the screen it even looks cinematic with the camera angles used and a widescreen CinemaScope presentation. The setting is only as good and as credible as the action that takes place within it and Honoré's direction is outstanding. The singing isn't perhaps as virtuosic as you might expect, sounding slightly underpowered in pretty much every role, but the characterisation and acting performances are thoroughly convincing, and even a little troubling.

Honoré is a great film director, and his experience in working with actors shows and really pays off as far as the ambitions of this production are concerned. With an earthy feel to the period instruments of the Freiburger Barockorchester under the direction of Louis Langrée and committed singing performances, this is a Così full of heat, passion and wild eroticism and certainly the most convincing production I have ever seen for this particular Mozart opera. As horrendous and abusive as the treatment often is, the director nevertheless brings much more to Così fan tutte than just a subversive little twist that sets out to shock. Rather it supports and emphasises the importance of Mozart and Da Ponte's themes by pushing them to their limits and seeing how well they stand up.

Surprisingly, for all Così fan tutte's reputation as a comedy, it copes well with the added weight of Christophe Honoré's direction and it even succeeds in revealing other dimensions. It shows the depth of passion and a revelling in the pleasures of the flesh that Mozart and Da Ponte could only suggest, but it also shows the abuse that be inflicted when these forces are misused or misplaced, and that a happy ending is not guaranteed. The important message it has for us however is that we are all free to love whoever we choose and that we are all equally empowered by love. Men and women, black or white, we're all the same - Così fan tutti.

Links: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, ARTE Concert